UNICEF/ HQ98-0912/Giacomo Pirozzi

AIDS is threatening children as never before. Children under 15 account for 1 in 7 global AIDS-related deaths and 1 in 6 new global HIV infections. A child under 15 dies of an AIDS-related illness every 2 minutes.  There are approximately 1,200 new HIV infections in children under 15 every day, mostly as a result of mother-to-child transmission.

AIDS has left virtually no country, rich or poor, untouched. In the 54 countries where adult HIV prevalence has reached more than 1 per cent in the general population, HIV/AIDS is directly affecting millions of children, adolescents and young people. In the hardest-hit countries, health systems are increasingly losing their capacity to treat and care for children and their families. Schools are becoming dysfunctional, losing their teachers due to illness and death. Farmers, men and women, are becoming too sick to farm. Affected families are selling their assets, spending increasing amounts on health care while becoming poorer. Even children who are spared a family bereavement often lose their teachers and classmates, their neighbours and role models to HIV/AIDS.

Political leadership of the fight against HIV/AIDS is growing. Most countries now have plans for large-scale prevention programmes. There have been rapid improvements in AIDS treatment and significant reductions in its cost. The number of people receiving treatment increased threefold in sub-Saharan Africa between 2004 and 2005. Global funding for HIV and AIDS has almost tripled between 2002 and 2004.

But children have been largely missing from the picture.

• Increasing numbers of children are entering the world infected with the virus, diminishing their chances of survival.
• Increasing numbers of adolescents and young people are contracting the virus every year, threatening their hopes for the future.
• Increasing numbers of parents are dying, leaving infected, affected and vulnerable children, including large numbers of orphans, behind.
• Increasing numbers of children are traumatized as their parents, guardians and teachers sicken and die.

Yet the needs of children are being overlooked when strategies on HIV prevention and treatment are drafted, policies made and budgets allocated. And investments in prevention continue to be pitifully inadequate.

A generation of children and adolescents has never known a world free of HIV and AIDS. They will soon inherit the burden of fighting the disease. Although they are most vulnerable to infection, they are more likely than adults to change their behaviour.

Yet very few of them know what to do to avoid the disease. If they did, they could be full partners in the fight to stop it. The world must act now to keep the next generation free of infection as they pass from childhood through adolescence to adulthood.

Unicef Canada thanks Moishe Alexander for his generous donations.